Falling in love with email

Email was and always will be marketers’ first (digital) love, and it’s turning more heads today than ever before. It has revolutionised the way in which marketing communications are executed.

But what about communicating with clients and employees on a more personal level?

Here’s a few suggestions you might find useful if you are serious about using email to its full potential; ensuring optimised customer service performance and consistent employee satisfaction.

Falling in love with emails

A labour of love

What’s your business relationship online status? Would clients call it a little “complicated”?

Gain some clarity by including one-click surveys in the form of a “Rate my Service” banner on all your employee emails. This will give your client the opportunity to provide feedback on the service they just received, and in return produce valuable insights on how your employees are really representing your business.

Real-time click alerts put you in the position to quickly work out how to put right any problems flagged up by unfavourable responses, so you can save the relationship. But there’s more…

What did the rating reveal about your employee? Did they measure up to the level you’ve come to expect from them or did they fall short of expectation? This invaluable information will help you to give praise (boosting employee confidence and leaving them with a feeling of appreciation) or maybe open your eyes to the need for some tough love and additional training.

I bet you never knew that one email could provide you with insights on both your clients and employees at the same time. Now isn’t that great news!

Emails can provide insights

Finding (and keeping) the perfect match

Email is the perfect solution for HR departments when it comes to recruiting and retaining employees.

When looking to fill new available positions, why not turn to existing employees first? Internal positions can be advertised in email banners to specific departments in order to target ideal candidates who fit the necessary criteria.

But this is just the beginning.  After having found the perfect candidate (whether internally or externally), your entire on boarding process can be automated. Do you remember your first day at a new company? Did you feel slightly overwhelmed, and a little unloved?

Make the candidate feel welcome and simplify the admin process with an on boarding campaign. Include valuable information and documentation in each mailer, such as policies and procedures, training schedules and more.

Every click is recorded, keeping you informed on the candidate’s engagement.

For the love of your employees

What if I told you that losing an employee could cost as much as 213% of their annual salary? I’ll give you a moment to let that one sink in.

And no, it’s not always “all about the Benjamin’s” for employees. They want to feel valued. They want to be involved. They want to feel empowered. They want to be challenged. They want to feel appreciated and loved.

Do any of these feelings resonate with you? Yes, we’ve all been there. And we have the perfect email solution for you.

Enter Internal Marketing.  You can inject specific, targeted internal marketing messages on email banners to different departments within your organisation. Distribute an important message from the CEO or convey a simple staff survey. Raise internal brand awareness to ensure employees are aligned with the organisation’s mission and vision. Notify them of upcoming events and don’t forget about wellness and safety messages.

The options really are endless and the key is to keep the communication alive. It’s all about engaging and involving them in the process.

An employee who is engaged, inspired, motivated and loved is not thinking about dumping you for another competitor anytime soon.

Have a look at these 6 Benefits of Email Branding for Internal Communications.

How does your communication skills measure up?

Our world is email, and well, we just LOVE email and all its endless possibilities.

It’s interactive. It’s personalised. It’s targeted. And the analytics speak for themselves.

So, if you feel that your business communication skills might be lacking and you’re serious about building stronger, more meaningful relationships with your clients and employees alike, we would love to hear from you. Maximize the potential of your email for improved, all-round communication.

This article was originally published by Rocketseed.

V5 Digital is the official Rocketseed Partner for Namibia. Unlock the power of email signature marketing!

Why not brand your most used form of communication and see the difference. Contact V5 Digital today, to get your company set up with Rocketseed.

How to Legally Use Copyrighted Images

With so much emphasis on visual content these days, it can be hard for businesses to keep up with their image demands, and continue to post high quality, relevant photos and graphics.

The ideal solution, of course, is to establish your own collection of original visual content to use, but that's often not possible, either due to time or capacity constraints. In that case, marketers and publishers will turn to the web for visual resources - but usage of the images you find via Google Images and the like can be risky, and could get your business in legal trouble, if you're not careful.

To help you avoid such, the team from Visme have put together this flow chart on digital image use, which provides pointers on where to seek permission, when you need to do so, and what you should look out for. 

And in addition to the flow chart, Visme has also put together a Fair Use Checklist (below the Infographic), providing additional insight on usage rules.

Make sure you take care in what, and how, you post with these tips. 

How to determine if you can use an images without any repercussion

This article was originally published by Social Media Today

As one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Namibia, we specialise in crafting clear and customer centric digital marketing content. We are more than capable to assist with any further inquiries you may have regarding copyrighted images. Don’t hesitate to contact V5 Digital today.

Three marketing mistakes your small business may be making

Growing your small business into a success

Do you run a small business? If so, chances are that you’re also responsible for all the marketing activities within your business. From whipping up a super-smart website (optimized for search engines, of course) to sending out a snazzy monthly e-newsletter, to acquiring as many new customers as possible, there’s no shortage of tasks to do when it comes to trying to get the word out about your brand.

There’s also no doubt that, as a small business owner, you’ll come across very different marketing challenges in comparison to your counterparts working in large enterprises. You’re more than likely to be dealing with smaller budgets, smaller teams (you may even be operating solo), and less time for operational tasks such as administration and rigorous AB testing of campaigns. As a result, you’re more prone to making mistakes that are not only magnified in the context of a small business but can also lead to long-term consequences for your brand.

In this article, we outline 3 of the top mistakes that Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) marketers tend to make — and provide some practical tips to prevent you from making them.

Sometimes it is hard to juggle all the tasks on your own

1. Juggling too many things at once

If your business is currently in a growth phase, there’s a strong chance that your brand isn’t quite a popular household name yet. And in an effort to secure that all-important first sale, you try to do too many things in such a short amount of time: you may work on several different marketing messages at the same time, you might try to advertise across too many channels, or you may pull the plug on a particular campaign after not seeing results for a day. The result? The execution of your marketing strategy is poor, so you’re either not attracting any customers — or they’re simply turned off by your disjointed messaging.

Our tip: One reason why (SME) marketers try to do multiple things at once is because they find it hard to determine which channel to focus on and where to allocate resources. Consequently, they spread themselves thin across many areas. Finding your first new customers begins with firstly determining who your perfect customer actually is.

Knowing who your ideal customer is changes everything from your product offering, marketing strategy, value proposition, pricing, tone of voice, and much more. While it’s true that defining your ideal customer can often feel like you’re excluding other potential customers who might buy from you, focusing on the right customers during your business’ growth stage can bring much-needed clarity to your marketing efforts. Soon, you’ll be on your way to landing your first bunch of new customers.

2. Not generating enough quality leads

As an SME owner, you may have recently hired a dedicated sales or business development professional who is known to be a gun at converting leads to customers. But chances are that you don’t have a marketing specialist who can help you route enough valuable leads to sales in the first place; in fact, it’s you who ends up trying in vain to generate your own sales leads — and more often than not, these efforts don’t get you the results you want. Your website is either attracting little to no leads, or it’s generating a handful of leads, but your salesperson argues that those leads are of poor quality and therefore, useless.

Our tip: You or your marketing specialist must generate enough quality leads to keep sales happy. How do you qualify enough leads for sales? By starting with a lead qualification framework, which involves routing qualified leads to sales and unqualified leads to nurture (for later requalification), a step that many marketers often neglect. To make this seemingly daunting task easier, good marketing automation software can help you automate the process of qualifying and scoring leads, and sending hot leads through the sales funnels via a CRM such as Pipedrive or Salesforce.

To illustrate this example, let’s refer to the lead qualification journey below. Leads that come through to your website and engage with you via an Intercom chat conversation are automatically qualified via an Intercom tag. These qualified leads are then sent to your sales team via Pipedrive for easy follow-up. The result: you’re not spending time manually sorting out qualified and unqualified leads, and you don’t need to hear your salesperson complain about poor quality leads again.

How to assign qualified leads and follow up

3. Failing to acknowledge loyal customers

Acquiring new customers is great but it’s also essential to maintain the customers that you already have and make sure they’re happy — this is especially crucial if you’re an SME owner.

According to Adobe, returning and repeat customers comprise only 8% of visitors to your website, but they deliver a staggering 40% of your total revenue. Additionally, Invesp argues that the probability of selling to an existing customer is between 60 to 70% while the probability of selling to a brand new customer is less than 20%. In short, investing in customer retention is the way to go if you want to see skyrocketing growth and a healthy boost in profits.

Our tip: If you want to boost your performance, spend more time retaining your valuable existing customers. Effective customer retention strategies include being proactive in providing superior customer support, delivering unparalleled customer experiences, and rewarding positive behavior through loyalty programs.

You should also consider reconnecting with disengaged customers as part of your customer retention strategy. Disengaged customers usually fall into 2 categories: the first set of customers likely disappeared after purchasing a single product while the second set spent a large amount of money on your products or services in the past, only to become disengaged recently for whatever reason. By using the power of marketing automation to win these customers back by sending offers or discounts triggered by an activity or event, you’ll be on your way to winning them back.

Success takes time and you need to work hard to become successful in any business

Success won’t happen overnight

Running an SME is challenging, but it will also be one of the most rewarding experiences you’ll ever have. Now that you’re aware of the most common marketing mistakes that small businesses make (and how you can fix them), you’ll be better prepared to continue growing your business to success.

This article was originally published by autopilothq.com.

Overwhelmed by digital?

The world of digital evolves so fast, that it can often seem overwhelming with a plethora of opinions and voices vying for your attention.

Cut through the noise with V5 Digital.

As one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Namibia, we specialise in crafting fine-tuned, clear, agile digital marketing strategies to help your business succeed. Don’t hesitate to contact V5 Digital for a free assessment or to help you decide whether investing in marketing automation and lead generation is the right next step.